I've Made Up My Mind
The decision was made.
Even now, the world was crawling with people who wanted to lock me inside the box of their own assumptions.
I understood it, in a way.
Human beings can't help their prejudices. Everyone feels that instinctive resistance to what's new and unfamiliar.
Asian actors headlining American TV shows and movies—it happened, of course. Just rarely. Vanishingly rarely.
And even then, the roles on offer amounted to a couple running a Korean grocery store, or some Oriental ninja. That was the entire repertoire.
Absurd.
Me, a ninja who's good at kung fu?
Does that sound like a real thing to anyone?
No—even if such a person existed somewhere, most people would never buy it. Because I'm American, that's why.
Korean blood did run in my veins, sure. My parents still lived closer to Korean sensibilities than American ones.
But I'd been born and raised here. A born-and-bred (?) American.
A Smith & Wesson revolver sat more comfortably in my hand than any kung fu punch ever could. I'd never taken a single martial arts class in my life, but I'd fired a gun a few times.
At home, we ate kimchi; outside, I'd order pizza at the houses of friends like Leo or Samson. My mother's kimchi stew was a taste of nostalgia, but my favorite food was pizza—any pizza, I wasn't picky about toppings.
Not that I can eat it right now.
Sad truths aside.
That was exactly why I wanted to smash people's preconceptions and set a new standard—not just on the pro wrestling road I was already traveling, but in the film industry too.
Thanks to what I'd done, I could see the world shifting, little by little, and honestly? It didn't feel bad.
The kids in my old neighborhood had started preferring moving their actual bodies to sitting in front of a screen.
Michelle Lee, the girl I'd met not long ago, had found her fighting spirit again after watching me.
So let's give it a shot, then.
In theory, anyway. I thought with a wry smile.
Pro wrestling I knew inside and out—I could figure out a way forward there. Movies, though. Movies I couldn't predict.
Wrestlers did study acting and step in front of the camera, so the two worlds overlapped to a degree. But as Pak had said, that subtle difference was going to carve out a canyon between them.
I loved watching movies, but that was a separate question from how much a wrestler's experience would actually translate to the work.
Which was exactly when it happened.
"Sin, there you are."
My partner for today's match—the masked wrestler, Kane—had come looking for me.
The mask wasn't part of the Mexican luchador tradition; it was a piece of his gimmick. The story was that he'd been burned as a child and become a monster. A big man standing over two meters tall, radiating menace and charisma in equal measure.
And yet backstage he was a gentleman, sharp as a tack—a man destined, after retirement, to climb so high he'd end up mayor of his hometown.
I nodded. "Looking forward to working with you today."
"Same here. You're booked to win, but let's talk through how we want to play it first."
So I spent the afternoon in the locker room piecing the match together with Kane—and somewhere in the middle of it, a single fact flashed through my mind.
This guy filmed a movie recently, didn't he?
A movie. Not long ago, he'd played a serial killer on screen.
And it had flopped, hard.
Worth asking about.
Once we'd finished hammering out the rough shape of the match, I asked carefully. "Senpai—mind if I ask you something?"
"Go ahead. Anything."
"What was it like, doing the movie? Any regrets, any upsides—what stuck with you?"
"Hm. That's a difficult question."
He let out a long sigh. "The first thing I learned is that I don't fit in that world. Not even a little."
"How so?"
"……I never imagined the film would be that bad."
"I'm sorry—what?"
"That turned out to be the important part. Everything else was secondary."
"……"
"Did that help at all?"
"Um. Hmmm."
That was… ambiguous.
"Why do you say that? The next one could be good, couldn't it?"
"No, Sin. Movies in this country are, in the end, a league of their own—a club for insiders."
Kane spoke with absolute conviction. "The scripts, the money, the crew—everything runs for the benefit of a chosen few. There's no room for a man like me to squeeze in. Why? Because I'm not at the level where they'd cast me in a blockbuster."
He meant ticket-selling power, then.
"And after my long run in the WWF, I can hardly start over from the bottom as a rookie. ……Pak's devoted himself to film too, and even he has no idea when he'll be back."
He wasn't wrong.
Pak had seemed, at first, to be parlaying his fame as a pro wrestler into a career as an action star.
That had been an illusion. The Pak of today was stuck in a transition period—he'd failed to stand out, and it looked like the industry was branding him a boring actor and letting him quietly fade away.
Though if he followed Schwarzenegger's playbook and pivoted to family films, he could rebrand and pull off a monster comeback.
Kane's advice made a certain grim sense.
But for me, it was the wrong advice. In the end, the only thing that mattered was this: could I get cast in a movie that would blow up?
Hollywood capital was nothing more than a way of raising those odds.
And I happened to know a great many films that had succeeded without it.
This might actually work out better than I thought.
Which was exactly when it happened.
The phone rang. Tiffany.
I murmured an excuse to Kane and stepped outside to take the call.
"Sin, is now a bad time?"
I'd stepped out of the locker room with the phone pressed to my ear. From the other end I could hear Flair chuckling in a way I did not appreciate, but I decided to ignore it.
"No, it's fine. What's up?"
"I called around to the people we've worked with on this side and got some results. First off—Kimura is, apparently, a pervert."
"……A pervert?"
"Supposedly he loves a cliché where a handsome male character shows up, gets stripped down, and whipped on screen."
"Surely that one isn't me."
"Ha ha—."
"Why are you laughing like that's ominous?"
"Anyway—Yujin makes movies where an American shows up and saves world peace. And in this one, the enemy is apparently North Korea."
"……Pass."
"Yeah, he was big in the eighties. Total has-been now, they say."
Sounds like our chairman.
"Last one: Antonio's an Italian-American director, on terrible terms with Hollywood, and he mostly shoots art films."
"Then why not just go to Europe—"
"Not good enough, presumably? More importantly—the investment meeting for this project went sideways. I heard something absolutely bonkers came out of it."
"Specifically?"
"A man comes on screen and spends three full hours dancing in the nude. Dwight Johnson turned it down."
"That man is definitely not me."
"Ha ha—."
"Why are you laughing like you've got goosebumps?"
I furrowed my brow. Well—no deliberation required there. Clear rejection, all around.
Pak had probably thrown me into this as a chance to climb—except none of these options meant anything at all.
"Oh, and one more thing."
"One more?"
"Yes—there's a director here named James Wan."
"James…… what?"
My eyes went wide.
"You sent profiles of four directors, right? This one came with an actual letter—begging you to appear in his film, of all things."
"W-wait a second."
I hurried back into the locker room, dug the packet I'd sent Tiffany out of my bag, and flipped through it. There really was a letter in there.
……I'd sent the whole bundle off carelessly, so apparently I'd never even noticed it existed.
But at that name, unlike everything before it, a faint memory stirred in the back of my mind.
James Wan. James…… Wan.
I'd definitely heard that name somewhere.
"I looked into him too. Hmm—apparently he just graduated from film school. A total newcomer."
"And?"
"That's honestly all I could dig up. Complete unknown—even Hollywood doesn't know him."
As she spoke, I read down through the director's letter.
Dear Mr. Dwight Johnson,
[A page of elaborate, flower-wrapped pleasantries followed, line after line.]
I am currently preparing to make a film, and if it would not be too much trouble, I would be honored beyond words if you would consider joining us in a supporting role.
The memory surfaced.
A slasher film. 2004. A rookie director's mega-hit.
Countless puzzle pieces clicked into place, one after another, until a single memory locked in.
"Hell Saw……"
"Hello?"
"Tiffany—I owe you one."
"F-for what? Anyway—is there anyone you actually want to work with? Please tell me it's not this James Wan guy."
"Ha ha—."
"No, why are YOU laughing like that's ominous?"
"Hahahahaha—."
Laughter was all that came out of me.
So this is the kind of luck that exists in the world!
As of now, Hell Saw hadn't been released. In this world, only I—someone who'd lived a previous life—could recognize its true worth.
The film earned good reviews, sure, but no one imagined it would become a worldwide phenomenon. And frankly, that was the correct opinion.
Horror, by its very nature, split audiences cleanly into love-it-or-hate-it camps—it was considered a genre where a runaway smash hit was nearly impossible to engineer.
Which was precisely what made the success of Hell Saw so extraordinary. Made on a shoestring budget of one million dollars, it went on to pull in over 150 million worldwide.
Especially that twist—the corpse that appears in the very first scene turns out to be the killer in disguise. That reveal is what made it legendary.
With that single film, James Wan—nobody yesterday—became a household name in Hollywood overnight.
That was the kind of movie Hell Saw was. Right now, no one on earth could see what it would become, but it was guaranteed to detonate.
Handled well, I was certain I could drink deep of that honey. Better still, if I landed the right role, I was confident I could juggle it alongside my wrestling schedule.
If the role is the killer.
The Jigsaw killer was the axis of the entire plot, yet his actual screen time was astonishingly short. Mostly he existed as a voice on cassette tapes. In the flesh, he appeared once in the middle of the film wearing a pig mask, once again in the final twist—and then, at the very end, lying in a bed, in little more than a passing shot.
In other words: a central character who anchors the whole film, while demanding the absolute minimum of shooting days.
Resolved to win that role no matter what, I faxed over my profile, an explanation of how my information had reached him, and my formal willingness to join the production.
……Exactly two minutes and thirty seconds later, the phone rang.
With a voice at full, barely-contained combustion.
I'd worried that even with my fame, being "just a wrestler" might earn me some condescension.
Instead, the opposite happened—my being a pro wrestler turned out to be the very reason for what followed.
"S-S-S-SIN!!!"
James Wan knew who I was. No—knew was underselling it.
"I'm your FAN!!"
Apparently he'd bought multiple T-shirts, too.
"Uh—yes. Director James Wan?"
"Please—call me JG!"
"Right, JG. As I wrote in the fax—I heard about your project through Pak and it caught my interest, so I reached out."
"The honor is mine!"
"The synopsis was superb."
"Thank you!"
"Especially the killer's guiding logic—fascinating stuff. He teaches his victims to treasure their lives, doesn't he?"
"Yes—he has his own philosophy, but I want to portray, above all, that he is still nothing more than a murderer."
"Because that's the only way the audience can immerse themselves in the victims' perspective, right?"
"Haha! You pick things up fast."
"Funny—I found myself sympathizing with the killer instead."
"Oh? How so?"
James Wan's interest was piqued. And so I began describing the film I'd watched in my past life—as though I'd simply predicted it.
"If I were that killer—obsessed the way he is with the preciousness of life—I think I'd be seized by the urge to watch my victims up close. From somewhere very, very near."
James Wan went silent.
He had to be floored. I'd grasped the film's biggest twist from the synopsis alone.
Granted, I was cheating—I had the movie from my past life memorized. But for the price of the tiniest sliver of guilt, I succeeded in burning myself permanently into James Wan's memory.
He couldn't hold back his awe.
"Wow…… you're incredible."
"Why, what do you mean?"
I flashed an innocent smile and played dumb.
And then the praise kept coming—a torrent so fierce the listener's cheeks burned with embarrassment.
"You're exactly what I imagined! A genius not just inside the ring—outside it too!"
"Uh—let me make sure I have this straight. Are you a WWF fan?"
"No!"
James Wan answered flatly, then fired back something even firmer.
"I'm YOUR fan! Damn it, back home you're a hero to us!"
"Th-thank you."
That should about do it.
Having decided I'd banked enough goodwill, I cut straight to business.
"So here's the thing, Director. If you're amenable, I'd like to actually work with you on this. What do you say?"
"It would be my honor! ……Though honestly, I can't promise I can match whatever fee you'd ask for."
"Then how about we meet and work out the details in person?"
And just like that, I'd secured the meeting with James Wan.
The pay was one thing—that I could live with.
That wasn't what mattered. What mattered was whether the production could align its shooting schedule with my wrestling calendar.
That, and only that, was what I wanted most right now.
Fortunately, James's location fell right along my next route. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
After meeting him here, I'd fly out to rejoin the touring crew.
I was waiting at the café—sunglasses on, our agreed meeting spot—when he appeared precisely on the dot.
James Wan. Around 170 centimeters—on the short side for America—but his eyes burned with pure passion.
"Sin, it's an honor to meet you."
"JG, right?"
"Yes! Heh heh—y-you recognize it, right?"
"……That's a GCW-era shirt of mine, isn't it."
"From the very first run! It's all worn out now, the print's mostly faded, but I wear it all the time."
"……"
I'll have to send him a new one later.
Thank goodness I already knew who he was—if I hadn't, I'd honestly have taken him for half a vagrant.
Still, it had been a while since I'd met a fellow Asian, and that part, I had to admit, was welcome. And knowing he'd become a monumental director someday, even that ragged shirt read as the sensibility of a genius.
God, I'm a cynical piece of work.
While I was thinking that, James pulled a thick screenplay and a stack of organized documents out of the backpack on his shoulders and sat down across from me.
"Haha, it still feels like a dream. Honestly, I never expected a superstar like you to appear in my film."
And I never expected to appear in yours, either.
Which was exactly why I was excited. I broke the ice with a smile.
"Shall we start with the role?"
"May I be frank with you?"
"O-of course."
James Wan's eyes gleamed, and I felt a flicker of unease.
"Play the Jigsaw killer."
"……Me?"
"Yes! If anyone can bring him to life, it's you! You saw straight through that killer's psyche!"
"Th-thank you?"
Was this warranted? Well—I had brought it on myself.
"The way you instantly understood a man so consumed by his own philosophy that he kills! You'll be magnificent, I know it!"
"Before that, though—one condition, if I may?"
"Yes—anything, name it!"
Wan nodded eagerly. Facing him, I laid out my demand: the production would coordinate its shooting schedule tightly around my wrestling commitments.
He didn't even pause to think.
"Of course we'll do that!"
"H-ha ha."
Everything is going suspiciously smoothly.
Just as that thought crossed my mind, James's expression turned grave all at once, and he slid a contract across the table.
"All that's left is to review the terms. We prepared as generously as we could, but I can't promise it'll please you."
Just how much is he talking about?
Not that it mattered much—for me the money was secondary; I was after the film's impact, so I had no intention of demanding much.
And then I looked at the contract—and froze solid.
"Is… is it too little?"
"N-no. Not at all."
It was the opposite. Um.
Was this even allowed? It felt like that kind of offer.
Five percent of the film's total worldwide revenue.
That was the figure James Wan had put on the table as my fee.
……Let me say it once more: Hell Saw would go on to gross more than 150 million dollars worldwide.